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April 14 , 2006: Too Smart, Too Cool, Too Rich, Too Beautiful for the Room
I have a friend who is what we in entertainment call, "too smart for the room." By this I mean she is too smart for the "room" of associates she now inhabits. This room, her room, is a university class. My friend, pursuing a Master’s, is smarter than one of her professors. What is the answer to this problem according to the professor? To punish her. This is not unusual. I know another woman, a young woman, whose education was halted due to this exact problem. Too smart, is a problem, too cool, too whatever, is not tolerated in our society well at all. We are all "created equal," well, what exactly does that mean to you?
To me, it means we are all as important as the next guy. It does not mean that everyone in a class I teach is as good at what I am teaching as their classmates are. It seems that in America, we don’t want anyone to stand apart. Why is this? Why do we ostracize the person who does not match us? I’m speaking not of the obvious problems we have with race, that is a given, a disgusting, stupid and way too old of a problem to write about here and now. I am speaking of the person who excels and how they are abused by our society. The smart kid gets slammed into walls at school, I know. The beautiful woman is a ‘whore," the smart person is a "smart-ass." Wrong.
My friend has a professor that cannot abide by the idea that she is not as intelligent as my friend. Because of this she is making a fool out of herself in front of her class, my friend and her colleagues. This is even MORE stupid than not being as smart as another person, meaning, why draw attention to yourself if you are in trouble already regarding your abilities?
A wise person told me once as I was learning to play tennis, which I mastered quite well when I was young, well enough to consider pro Tennis. "Why would you want one of those little tennis dresses with ruffled panties when you can’t play yet? If I wore one of those, yes, more people would have watched my cute little butt, but I was not a good player yet! Makes sense to me! If my friend’s teacher has been publicly outsmarted by her student, why take that student on and draw attention to herself when she is beaten again by a superior brain, at least in this area? (She is probably not as smart in other areas as well, but I’ll lay off that possibility.) The teacher must want either to be "beaten" into the ground by a superior intellect, or she must be stupid enough to try to beat my friend, her student, again!
The later was true; she wanted to try to beat my friend in another mental battle. She lost the next battle as well and badly, more publicly. The sorriest thing about this story is that she is taking my friend on again. She is dust. THAT is sad. It is NOT sad for the teacher, it is sad for my friend. We are taught to root for the underdog. Is the underdog here the teacher or the student? Is the underdog the beautiful woman who makes the other woman feel like sh*T, or the beautiful woman. I’ll tell you whom we need to root for: The student, and the beautiful woman. You may ask why, after all, they have all this going for them, why should we care?
We should care because of the very bad abuse the gifted person will receive and the possibility of actual injury to them! Too smart may be pushed out of a program she loves. Too beautiful may lack friends and be lonely because of false rumors spread about her. Too cool may be lonely because he/she makes others look less hip. Too rich may be lonely as well, or kidnapped or taken advantage of, or worse. But we don’t worry about these things do we? We, Americans, worry about the "have nots," in this kind of scenario. I, for one, think this stinks. A gifted person perhaps needs MORE of our protection, compassion and help. A savant is very vulnerable, isn’t this so? These that we see have been given "gifts," are vulnerable too.
With a gift comes a responsibility and vulnerability. If you were gifted a big screen TV and you lived in a poor neighborhood; you had better ad another bolt to your door! If you keep that TV you had better be ready for bills you can’t pay if it breaks. If you win the lottery, even win about 200,000, that’s it, you are a target! Your family, friends, your enemies and your cousins are going to be paying you a visit. Hell, they will hire a private detective to find you! (You DO know how easy it is to find somebody now?) Oh, yes, you will be pitched every con you ever heard of an over 100 you haven’t. And so it goes with the other sorts of gifts.
Gifted brain? You’ll be doing homework for others, giving them your notes and people will be kissing up to you when tests are coming! Gifted with beauty? You will be hated by a large part of the population, have a hard time getting an education without being graded on how you smile at the professor and forget about work, because no one will hear you, they will be looking at you instead! Gifted with artistic ability? Good, now everyone can use you for ideas for their home, from what art to hang to what silver and china to use for their dinner party! It is UGLY out there for those with "gifts." They are NOT gifts; they are responsibilities at their shiniest and down right curses at their worst.
And so my friend is waiting to get off of "time out," after her professor put her there for outsmarting her. The problem is that my friend, being the smarter, has made it work for her and will soon have status no one in her program has.
And so it goes, what goes around comes around.
Play nice, play fair, or go home.
Readers' Comments
Hey A.
I think a lot of the resentment and pettiness toward gifted or beautiful people is sheer jealousy. You are dead on when people will label a beautiful girl a "slut" to make themselves feel better and they think ---in some form it degrades the person. I always had the "Dumb blonde" crap---I was like---"I have a freaking brain thank you!" I experienced jealousy toward me in High School because I could write well and was in the gifted class for it. Intelligence intimidates those who are ignorant--not stupid ignorant but ignorant in the sense of stereotyping and being so unsure of themselves they resent gifted or beautiful people. It's bizarre. I worked in a Cosmetic Department when I was young(er) and going to grad school and was thin and told I was beautiful. I guess the dude thought maybe I'd be a freaking airhead (dumb blonde crap again!) and an easy screw-to put it bluntly. When he found out I had 2 Bachelor's and was getting a Master's he was so intimidated---he told his friend--so we didn't hook up---which I am eternally grateful for!!!!!!!!! I hate when men are intimidated by smart women---it's always grounds for put-downs and cliches and little nasty digs. What? God can't make me pretty and intelligent at the same time???WTF?
I'm sorry your friend is going through that! I had a bitch in an English class (my Bachelor's area)---who---get this one----gave my friend and I lower grades because SHE HATED THE MAJOR AUTHORS WE CHOSE!!!!!!!!!!!!! I kid you not! My friend did F. Scott Fitzgerald who I believe she referred to as a"drunken bum" and I did Nathaniel Hawthorne (my hero) whom she loathed and considered to be High School level!!!!!!!!! SHE terrorized me---told me my paper had to be re-written and if I didn't i would NOT get my English degree!!!!!!! I cried---I wish I didn't but I did---because my just Mom recovered from open-heart surgery where she was actually dead on the table and she wanted to be at my graduation and would touch my class ring and tell me that. That was what went through my mind---not her stupid arrogance---she even said--"Stop crying like a baby and get over it!!!!!!!" SATAN She-devil! I re-wrote it and she STILL gave me static so I went to the Department Head and told him this nutcase has no business teaching if she does this crap to students (apparently she did before to get jollies) and I said if he didn't handle my paper from then on I would file a formal complaint against her. You know why she picked on me so much----out of personal hatred of the Head of my other major Dept!!! Sick! So the other head---who was my advisor and an angel--was like a pit pull--and complained to the English chair too and most likely let the bitch have it too! I did tell her I had better teachers in high School at least and---o.k. yes---I AM immature---I stink bombed her office! When I visited Salem I had all I could do NOT to mail her a "You'll be hanged at Gallow's Hill" proclamation!
Some professors are seriously wacko and I have also had a dumb one who was constantly corrected by students--in Math. I would file a formal complaint to the Head of the department and then the Dean if she feels unsatisfied. I wouldn't reccommend a stink bomb. It was funny---the entire floor smelled like a toilet! People were checking their shoes to see if they had stepped in poop!
I think it's jealousy at the bottom---pure and simple---instead of respecting and admiring talented, or intelligent people there is resentment and that just shows what a small person the other one is.
Colleen Shelnutt
Beautiful women may have their share of problems, and problems that are different, but they also enjoy particular advantages that carry over through most of their life. They are almost always, as a rule, where men are concerned, noticed, treated with respect, spoken to, acknowledged, have their egos stroked, and are placed in every way above those less "beautiful." It is everywhere you look. In the workplace, men wait for new hires, and almost every time, when it is a woman, the question is "how does she look?" This gets very old amongst the other women, and immediately sets up a feeling of "I hope she's not great-looking so we can work on an even keel here." Once that hot chick becomes employed, we watch while the men fall all over themselves to be able to talk to her, yet will not even meet our eyes as we pass. We, the less beautiful, become less as human beings. This is unversal, and has been going on since the beginning of time.
A daughter of a friend (who is herself beautiful and "plays it") looks like a better-looking Cindy Crawford. She has used her beauty many times in many ways to get ahead, and, when others are passed by for promotion simply because this girl is beautiful, the girl makes sarcastic comments about "too bad you weren't born beautiful." Her mother tells me these stories gleefully - she is proud that her daughter is getting the same "beauty" privileges that she has gotten in her life. She and her daughter are the type of beautiful women who use that beauty in ways that "get" them things that less beautiful women are not able to obtain, due solely to phyiscal beauty. It is certainly not due to their intelligence, which is not noteworthy.
I am not one to make mean comments about the new "pretty" girl, and I have befriended many of them. But once you do, when you go out in public together, you become invisible. I do not put my friends down, but the impact of becoming invisible leads to lower self-esteem.
And, of course, there is the husband/bf issue. Some beautiful women seem oblivious to the attention from "our" men, others thrive on it and play it up like crazy. They know very well the effect they have on certain men and do not try to curb their choice of clothing, their sexual innuendo, their need to be "the prettiest." One of these women, whom my husband called "the most sensual woman he had ever met", played it for all it was worth, and was one of the causes of my breakup with my husband. Hope she feels proud of that, because she wasn't truly interested in my husband, only in the ego-stoking he provided.
The husbands/bfs spend a great deal of time brainless, as the pheromones sent out by the beautiful women reel them in. They become disrespectul to their wives/girlfriends, some to more of a degree than others. My first husband told me I was ugly every day, while extolling the physical beauty of co-workers and friends. He flirted openly with the ones he told me he found attractive. Other boyfriends did the same thing - flirted openly with me standing there. Some women bought it, some women seemed a bit confused, wondering what my role was that this man was hitting on her in front of me - sister, perhaps? Friend? Certainly not wife?
This is another reason I prefer to remain single. When I am single, I am not compared to the beautiful women, I am not told I am less because I am not beautiful, I am not humiliated by disrespectful behavior on the part of my men. To be told "why can't you have beautiful skin like so and so" is painful and of course impossible, and when I see that person, what I feel is not jealousy, but inferiority, brought on by the cruel words of my SO.
Alone, I have less and less problem being friends with attractive women. They are no longer a threat to my relationship, because I have none.
By the way, my ex SIL also occasionally flirted with ex-bfs in a big way. It is hard to trust other women, and even more hard to trust the male who may buy into the flirting.
Not all of us "hate" you because you are attractive, we have good reason to fear you though. Some of us are sorry that we are not comfortable being friends with you, but in many cases, it is for the sake of the survival of our relationships with the men in our lives. You may not be a flirt, tease and simply be standing there, beautiful, but after the encounter, we get to go home and hear our husbands describe to us how beautiful you are, and then, perhaps, tell us how unattractive we are, and they will use you as a comparison guide. We are not necessarily jealous, we do not necessarily want to look like you or be like you, some of us are OK with being who we are, but we are told that we are "less than" because we do not meet the "beauty" criteria being laid out almost everywhere, and that is unacceptable in today's society.
That's all for now.
Silent Storm